Darwin's Our Take: Amazon unveils Connect Health platform

Amazon unveils Connect Health platform designed to ease providers’ administrative workload

On Thursday, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced Amazon Connect Health, an agentic AI solution created to reduce the burden of administrative tasks for providers and make it easier for patients to access care.

Amazon Connect Health integrates with patients’ electronic health records so that providers and staff can use it for patient verification, appointment management, medical history reviews, clinical documentation, and medical coding.

Patients can also benefit when providers use the solution, Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of AWS applied AI solutions, noted in a blog post. For instance, Amazon Connect Health is “ready to book appointments instantly, without hold music or having to leave a voicemail and wait for [the call] to be returned.”

The tool “confirms who the patient is, checks their insurance, reviews patient and provider availability — and books the appointment while the patient is still on the line,” Aubrey wrote. If the call requires “a human touch,” she added, Amazon Connect Health “escalates seamlessly to staff,” a process providers can customize.

Ahead of patient-provider visits, Amazon Connect Health reviews the patient’s medical history across care settings to prepare a concise summary and insights the provider can review before joining the patient in the exam room.

Then, it can transcribe the conversation during the visit and draft clinical notes for the provider’s review. “Every detail in that note links back to the exact moment in the conversation where it was discussed,” Aubrey pointed out.

After the visit, the tool generates a summary and provides medical codes for billing. Each code is linked to source evidence for auditing, Aubrey noted.

“Visits are billing-ready within minutes,” she wrote, significantly shortening the typically time-intensive process of submitting a claim to the patient’s insurance company.

Aubrey acknowledged the need for “an unwavering commitment to security, patient privacy, and data integrity” and cited AWS’ “more than 130 HIPAA-eligible services and certifications for global IT and compliance standards.”

The evidence mapping feature built into Amazon Connect Health applies to “every piece of AI-generated output,” not just the ambient conversation transcripts created during patient visits. For example, suggested medical codes are mapped to confidence scores and supporting evidence.

The solution ensures paperwork is completed ahead of patient visits and helps patients avoid “wasted visits because something wasn’t communicated up front,” Aubrey wrote.

It also helps health systems run more efficiently, she added, as spending less time on preparing for patient visits, documentation, and billing gives providers more face-to-face time with patients.

OUR TAKE: Citing a patient engagement survey conducted by Accenture, Colleen Aubrey noted in the Amazon blog post that 89% of patients said navigation challenges, such as difficulty scheduling appointments, long wait times, and access barriers, were the reason they switched providers.

Aubrey said AWS has seen “where the system breaks down” through its work with Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, as well as through partnerships with Montefiore Health System and the U.K.’s National Health Service.

Amazon Connect Health has demonstrated “promising results” at health systems that have started deploying the technology, according to Aubrey, including UC San Diego Health, which handles 3.2 million patient interactions per year. The health system is saving 1 minute per call, diverting 630 hours per week from patient verification tasks to direct patient assistance, and reducing call abandonment rates by 30% — and up to 60% in certain departments — with Amazon Connect Health’s capabilities.

Amazon One Medical has been implementing the technology as well, with ambient documentation now spanning more than a million visits, according to Aubrey. She said the organization would be expanding its use this year to include intelligent medical coding.

“When technology adapts to the way people live and work, adoption follows. That’s exactly what we’re seeing with Amazon Connect Health,” Aubrey wrote.

What else you need to know

CVS Health is partnering with Google Cloud to create an agentic AI-powered health care engagement platform for consumers called Health100. (The company revealed plans to build the platform in December at its annual Investor Day event.) To carry out the initiative, CVS Health just launched a health technology services subsidiary also called Health100. Among the stated goals, the platform will provide consumers with real-time proactive support to achieve better health and improve access to care, along with offering cost transparency and ways to reduce out-of-pocket spending. In addition, CVS Health said, Health100 “will serve as the conduit to pharmacist-led care management.”

The provider- and insurance-agnostic platform will feature an interoperability infrastructure that is capable of gathering users’ data from multiple sources across the health care ecosystem, including insurers, providers, pharmacies, labs, and, eventually, wearable devices. The company plans to launch the Health100 platform this year and said it intends to let other innovators build specialized applications as part of an open ecosystem approach.

Separately, CVS Caremark announced that it is expanding use of its Surescripts Touchless Prior Authorization technology to include select specialty drugs. The technology connects directly to a patient’s electronic health record to access the information needed for prior authorization and shares the information with CVS Caremark, allowing for rapid approval decisions. Initially, two “high impact” specialty drugs have been added: Alkermes’ substance use disorder treatment, Vivitrol (naltrexone), and Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex (cannabidiol), which is used to treat seizures.

CarepathRx is part of Cigna’s Evernorth Health Services, multiple news outlets reported recently. Evernorth told Becker’s Hospital Review the acquisition was completed last year, though no formal announcement was made. Evernorth and CarepathRx Health System Solutions, a subsidiary of CarepathRx, formed a strategic partnership in 2023 to increase access to specialty care. At the time, Evernorth made an investment in the company in return for a minority stake. A spokesperson told Fierce Healthcare the acquisition is part of Evernorth’s work to expand support for “patients living with specialty conditions and the clinicians who treat them.” CarepathRx works with hospitals, health systems, and pharmacies to enhance services in the areas of home and ambulatory infusion, specialty pharmacy, and telepharmacy.  

A new report indicates that hospitals can charge insurers vastly different prices for prescription drugs, even at the same hospital on the same day for the same drug.  The analysis, conducted by research firm 3 Axis Advisors, revealed an average maximum-to-minimum negotiated price ratio of 2,347 to 1, meaning, for example, if one insurer pays $1 for a certain drug, another insurer might pay $2,347 at the same hospital on the same day, PatientRightsAdvocate.org (PRA) explained in a blog post.

Among the key findings, the report noted the following price discrepancies among hospitals: $12,000 to $43,000 for a 200 mg dose of Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab); $17,000 to $67,000 for a 480 mg dose of Bristol Myers Squibb’s immunotherapy drug Opdivo (nivolumab); $16,000 to $65,000 for a 300 mg dose of Genentech’s multiple sclerosis treatment Ocrevus (ocrelizumab); and $6,500 t0 $27,000 for a 300 mg dose of Biogen’s MS drug Tysabri (natalizumab). While negotiated rates by insurers averaged about 40% off list prices, in some cases insurers paid four times a drug’s list price.

In tandem with the report’s release, PRA launched a new hospital drug price finder tool consumers can use to compare drug prices in hospitals “across all health plans and the cash price, across regions and hospitals.”

Post-acute care provider Select Medical will become a privately held company in a deal valued at $3.9 billion. Based in Mechanicsburg, Pa., Select Medical operates an estimated 104 critical illness recovery hospitals, nearly 40 rehabilitation hospitals, and more than 1,900 outpatient rehabilitation clinics throughout the U.S. The company signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by a consortium consisting of two senior executives from Select Medical — including co-founder and executive chairman Robert Ortenzio — and private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe.

The consortium agreed to pay $16.50 per share for all outstanding shares of Select Medical it does not already own. If the required closing conditions are satisfied, including receipt of regulatory approvals, the transaction is expected to close midyear.  

Executive moves

Heather Cianfrocco, who has held numerous executive positions at UnitedHealth Group over 24 years, including a short-term role as CEO of Optum, announced on LinkedIn that she is leaving the company. The post did not provide a reason or timeline for her departure. Most recently, she served as UnitedHealth’s executive vice president of governance, compliance and information security.  

Mark Kaye, chief financial officer of Elevance Health, will take on the additional responsibilities of overseeing Carelon, the company’s health care services division, when the current president of Carelon, Peter Haytaian, leaves on May 4. According to the press release, Haytaian is leaving “to devote more time to family commitments.” He will serve as a special adviser through the end of the year.

Dr. Kevin Tabb will step down as president and CEO of Beth Israel Lahey Health next year, the health system announced. Dr. Tabb has led BILH since it was formed in 2019 through the merger of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Lahey Health. Before that, he served as CEO of BIDMC, starting in 2011.

DC developments

Dr. Vinay Prasad will leave the FDA at the end of next month, marking his second departure from the agency. He left the FDA in July but was brought back in less than two weeks to lead the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the division responsible for regulating vaccines. A successor will be named before Dr. Prasad leaves this time, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary wrote in a social media post Friday afternoon. According to The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Makary said Dr. Prasad only intended to stay at the FDA during his one-year leave of absence from the University of California, San Francisco.

What we’re reading

Bundling Drugs: The Risks Of Combining Copay Assistance. Health Affairs, 3.4.26

Private Equity’s Transformation of American Medicine — Implications for Health Equity. NEJM, 2.28.26

Sacred Space. JAMA, 2.26.26

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